Well I had a hell of a morning. In case you haven't been keeping up on Afghan current events, there was a wee bit of violence against my base. You can read about it here and here. Long story short, a bunch of insurgents...sorry, Enemies of Afghanistan...occupied a building next to the Kabul Airport/the-base-I-live-and-work-at and proceeded to attack.
At 4:30 in the damn morning.
It was rather irritating and I was rather annoyed.
I woke up to the sound of RPGs and machine gun fire. It sounded close but what was I going to do? I rolled over and tried to sleep through it. The fighting got louder and more intense. My tentmates began to wake up and ask eachother what was going on. Then the "Big Voice" went off warning of a ground attack. I figured there was no chance of me sleeping through this.
I got up and wandered over to the entrance of the tent. There were others milling around outside and the sound of RPG fire and machine guns was quite clear. I made the decision to get dressed, no way am I going through an attack on my base in my pajamas. That's just unprofessional.
I also decided to put on clean underwear. If I'm going to die, it's going to be with clean underwear on. Pretty sure I was taught that lesson by Calvin and Hobbes.
A group of us were hanging around outside the tent when we encountered the surreal moment of seeing a woman in her late 60s wearing a bathrobe and body armor; got to love contractors, we come in all shapes, sizes, and ages. Eventually, the soldier in charge of our living area shoo'ed us to the bunkers. I haven't cowered in a bunker since '04, I'm not about to cower in one now. I stood defiantely outside the concrete protection. Shit continued to explode in the distance. A woman clung tightly to her M4 rifle.
Old Russian helicopters that the Afghan Air Force uses showed up about an hour after the attack began and circled over where the fighting was occuring. Some Blackhawks arrived a bit after that. The "Big Voice" continued its announcement that the base was on lockdown and everyone should stay where we were. People stood around checking the internet on their smartphones for any news they could find.
The noise eventually began to die down. However, every time I thought it was over an RPG would go off and the fighting would start all over again. In my head I knew that every random RPG launch would mean another hour or two of me sitting by the damn bunker.
I retrieved a book from my tent. If I'm going to be stuck sitting around while an attack is occuring I could at least do something productive.
By 7:30 I decided I'd had enough and went back into my tent and fell asleep. "Big Voice" announced around an hour later "All Clear".
Damnit, can't even miss work now. Inconsiderate bastards.
Final report: 7 dead insurgents, 0 Afghan Security Force casualties, 0 ISAF casualties. Worst insurgents ever.
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